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4 key factors to launching a successful CTV campaign

Advanced TV advertising is growing rapidly and it’s no surprise. With the number of cord-cutters and cord-nevers on the rise, today’s marketing professionals are being forced to reevaluate longstanding TV advertising strategies in order to reach an increasingly fragmented and elusive audience.

To help ensure your client’s 2018 media plans are built to mirror today’s consumer preferences, here are four key factors to follow to launch a successful CTV campaign for your client.

4 key factors to a successful CTV campaign

1. Targeting

When running a CTV campaign, you should consider using a broader target audience (if your client’s campaign allows for it). CTV is a great way to reach consumers, you want to make sure your client’s ad is not being limited due to strict targeting parameters. However, if audience targeting is something your campaign needs, it’s important to make sure your ad tech partner has the capabilities to provide those levels of targeting. Since CTV is still growing and evolving, most technology falls short in audience targeting without it having an impact on scale.

Specs

Serving a low-quality video can negatively impact your CTV campaign’s performance and cost you valuable advertising dollars.Luckily, there are guidelines you can follow to help you avoid this issue and focus on the campaign goals.

To guarantee the quality of your ad, there are two key specs to keep in mind:

Bitrate. The creative’s bitrate is an important piece to pay attention to. The bitrate determines the quality of your ad—a higher bitrate will yield a higher quality video ad. It is generally recommended that video ads have a minimum bitrate of 5,000 kbps.

Aspect ratio. In addition to bitrate, your ad should conform to a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, which is the current standard for HDTV screens. Recommended ad sizes for this aspect ratio are 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720 pixels—for the appropriate horizontal and vertical measurements.

Sticking to these general recommendations can help ensure that your client’s video ad is of a high quality when it reaches consumers.

3. Length of CTV ads

There are three standard ad slots for CTV: 15-seconds, 30-seconds, and 60-seconds. In CTV, most ad spots are built for 30-second videos, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that this length will give you the most scale. 15-second videos can also run in 30-second ad slots, meaning your ad isn’t restricted to one specific spot. With a 30 second video, your opportunities are limited in which ad slot they run. This means that running a 15-second video can offer more scale, flexibility, and run placement opportunities than a more traditional 30-second video.

4. Call consumers to action

In digital advertising, most ads have a call to action such as filling out a form on a website or signing up for an email subscription. Consumers can’t exactly click an ad on their TV screens, but that doesn’t mean you can’t include a call to action. The action will just take place in the real world like visiting a website, looking up product information or driving to a physical store location.

The best part? TV advertising is no longer a silo that cannot be connected back to consumer conversions. With the help of technology partners, you can connect TV ad spend back to sales for your client—whether in the real world or online.

Make the most of change

The evolution of TV is opening new doors for marketing professionals to reach their consumers. Why not take full advantage of these changes by incorporating CTV advertising into your marketing plan? Keeping these key factors in mind, you can fully embrace Advanced TV and reap its benefits for your clients.